


I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you

by thumos (Demidea)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post-Fall, Pre-Recall
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 19:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demidea/pseuds/thumos
Summary: Jesse's lived a long, strange life. He gets up each morning and dresses as a cowboy, for fuck's sake, but even he has to admit getting a goodbye from beyond the grave is a bit trope-y.





	I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank smarshtastic and fabrega for their amazing series of works in the SALTapalooza collection. Their writing and characterization kept my love for McReyes alive and well. Inspiration for this fic was drawn from Amy Krouse Rosenthal's final published essay, "You May Want To Marry My Husband," and the title (and subsequent chapter titles) are taken from a Lord Huron song, "The Night We Met."
> 
> I apologize that this is unbeta'ed!

Jesse holds the delicate black square of plastic between his metal fingers. His company for the night is feigning calm, but knows the signs. She’s frozen, her eyes wide and lips thin as she watches him handle her prize.

“One’va kind, you say?” He asks, leisurely, careless, savoring the way her shoulders tense at his tone. What a picture she made, her leg crossed over at the knee, leaning on the crook of her elbow, the pretense highlighted by the tension radiating from her taut spine. She’s not in control and she knows it. “Unknown to your bosses.” He spins the chip. She flinches. “Why’d you give it to me?”

“I read your articles.” The spinning stops, immediately. Her posture changes, relaxes. “You believe in justice? So do I.”

"I can't rightly say I know what you mean-" But his own wariness betrayed him already.

"Of course."

They stare each other down for a long, long time. Jesse rouses himself, shrugs off his cocky pretenses, straightening up just to hunker down because once again he forgot how heavy the world weighed on his shoulders. “That important, huh?”

“Sí.”

“Well, alright then.” Sombra holds up her hand, and in it a personal audio-file player materialize in a purple flash. Jesse's eyebrows raise. "Now?"

She holds the device out to him, expression serious, and repeats his words. "That important."

* * *

 

[ _ The recording starts with thirty seconds of harsh, tentative breathing, the type of breathing that put you in the mindset of a patient with fragile lung tissue. Then, a cough, a clearing of the throat, and a familiar voice, soft and painfully raspy. _ ]

I’m not writing this because I can’t seem to keep ahold of my thoughts and a pen at the same time. Every time I focus on one, the other disappears. And I’m afraid, so afraid, that if I don’t put this somewhere, it’ll fade entirely. Forgotten by the original owner, shunted under the rug and set ablaze by the powers that be.

I don’t have much time. I don’t think there’s enough of me left to assess the risks

You’ll want him. Jesse McCree. I understand. I did, too. I do, too. Crackshot, dark eyes too intelligent for his own good. As a teen, too, with a good two decades of refining ahead of him. Prison was a waste, an unfair one at that, the kid was still a kid, surviving on the only means he had available to him. Did that make it any easier to convince the others? [ _a chuckle poured like desert sand_ ] Hell no. But he was worth it.

That’s one thing about those assholes you’re working so hard to tear down that makes me agree with you. They say they’re out to save humanity, but can’t see it in their purist hearts to throw a line to a boy who’s only options were starvation or crime. And why couldn’t they see that? Why couldn’t they understand? The world was saved by men and women who had nothing and forged themselves into weapons anyway. He was exactly the stock we needed.

[ _Approximately two minutes are filled with hacking, another two taken by heavy breathing._ ]

Yeah, that was no fun. Strangest thing about being terminal, the closer you are to death, the easier it is to swing between fighting the end off desperately with every breath and wishing fiercely your lungs would just make up their mind and fucking disintegrate already.

[ _his breathing eases back to a tighter version of his rasp earlier_ ]

Terminal. [ _the word is spat, dark and bitter_ ] Fuck this world’s cruel. Wanna hear a joke? A man makes a decision at twenty-fucking-two to do what it takes to save this world. Desperate times, desperate measures, including, apparently injecting all kinds of shit into his body. Survives hell. Meets a kindred soul. Spends half a decade fighting how fucked he is for that kindred soul. And? Right when he finally caved and let that soul in? The decision from twenty-two comes right back and bites him in the ass.

It’s stupid, you know? To regret the lives we could have had. Thinking about how we could’ve stopped fucking around and just admitted what we wanted when we wanted it, we could’ve had a few more years together.

Maybe he wouldn’t have left so easily.

_[He doesn’t talk after, the silence creeping in. There must’ve been some editing, though, because the quality of silence flips like a switch, and Gabe starts talking again, now less raspy and freer of wheezes._ ]

I remember the day it all changed for me. I mean, I had known he’d flourished. The official reports of his work alone would’ve been enough of an indication, but he went beyond that. He’d wormed his way among the ranks of Overwatch, endeared himself to several key parties, including Amari, who would later assist him on his marksmanship. He was everywhere, it felt like. On the shooting range, chatting up civilian contractors in the halls, getting a chuckle out of his senior officers in the mess, he somehow wormed his way into every Blackwatch planning session I managed to book, even if they were off the books.

[ _A sound like the shuffling of ancient papers. He’s chuckling?_ ]

He’s crafty that way. I don’t remember why I was watching him. Sometimes I’d be scanning the room and he’d catch my eye and wouldn’t let go. I don’t remember what he was doing, probably wrapping his ankles for a sparring session or tying his boots. All I know is he was straightening up from a crouch, and he looked me straight in the eye, and I knew two things: he’d grown as tall as I was somehow without my knowing, and I had lost my goddamn mind.

When I pulled him out of Deadlock, he wasn’t exactly runty, but malnutrition and slight drug use had taken their dues, to the point where we thought he was two years younger than he actually was. Something, I might add, he didn’t make an effort to correct until after Ana and I spent three years celebrating with the wrong number on the cake. Anyway, back to point one: he’d grown, filled in, shaped himself into a man in his prime.

And point two? I thought he was beautiful.

[ _another cut here, one texture of silence bleeding into another texture of silence. Gabe’s voice seems more conversational, less pained, than it had in its previous iterations_ ]

It was the mission back to Durado that did us in. I mean, there were other moments before that. Touches, looks, just enough to indicate I wasn’t crazy for looking twice, not enough for either of us to work past the triple guessing this line of work requires.

But Durado… Deadlock wasn’t as dead as we suspected. We got wind the maximum security prison Jesse almost spent the rest of his life in had a few changes in administration that stunk. Funny enough, it was Jesse that brought it up to me. So I looked into it, and sure enough, former bosses of The Deadlock Outlaws had turned the prison into something of a luxury hotel. And the more we dug, the stranger the picture. Local officials and working officers of the law going missing or turning up cities away, an out-migration of small business, a corporation buying all the shipping companies…

Jesse was the one who pointed out we didn’t notice until recently, nearly eight years from his unconventional  induction, and so they’ve had eight years to move, and plan. He was right, and we went in anyway knowing there might be a level we were not prepared to handle. We get in? A small army awaits us. Deadlock has a long memory, and they remembered me for sure.

Jesse’s old boss was dead center, gave him the warmest welcome. Turns out, there was a code they used, one that caught Jesse’s eye in the first place, telling him it was time to come home. He looked me in the eye, then drew his gun and held it to my head.

Bastards took his bait, revealing their entire fucking plan to me and my team. There had been an error in processing years earlier, one that allowed missing members of the gang to infiltrate and gradually restore Deadlock to a modicum of power.

I made Jesse wait. He almost dropped the act a couple times, I could feel the anger radiating off him. And when I finally dropped my arms, he took a dozen men out before I picked my shotguns back up.

[ _low, thoughtful humming_ ]

He held a gun to my head, and I felt like the safest person in that room. Do you know how fucked up that is? I do.

I called him to my office after the mess was taken care of. He hadn’t been sleeping, I could see that. Probably thought I was going to ball him out over the dumbass stunt of his. Hell, I didn’t know what I was going to do, just that I was done fucking around. Heh. I kissed him.

You know what the bastard said after? _Are you gonna de-brief me now, boss?_

[ _chuckling_ ]

The bastard was wearing boxers. Didn’t even apologize for it.

[ _click_ ]

He’s a sap. Painfully so. It almost makes up for how much of wicked tease he is. He’s a master of whispering dirty diatribes in your ear whenever you both have a minute, then waiting hours into a busy day, usually when you’re talking to someone important, to meet your eye and wink. I can’t count the number of times that smartass got us off in the weirdest places because he couldn’t keep his innuendo and implication to himself until we got to our room. It was like playing the sexiest game of catch me if you can imaginable, which [groans] frankly is embarrassing to hear myself say, but what can you do?

Anyway. Where was I going with this? He’s frustratingly good at turning people on… And he’s the biggest sap. Bingo.

[ _words are slightly slurred, with uneven pauses between, perhaps drugged?_ ]

He’d have these moments with his face. His stupidly handsome face, mind you, that’s surprisingly emotive when he’s vulnerable. He’s so damn earnest when he’s tender. I don’t know if you’ll remember that look. I know I thought I’d never forget it. Nestled in my comforter, hair splayed across the same pillow he’d mashed half his face against just to keep eyes on my face, thanking me for letting him touch as he pleased…

[ _deep, shuddery breath_ ]

I didn’t deserve that. Knew it then, too. He found that out, later. The hard way.

[ _click. Raspy breathing Gabe is back_ ]

He’s still out there, you know? Probably will be when you finally find this. Probably wearing some stupid get-up. Fun fact, he told me why he does that. It’s a form of deflection, a clever bit of perception management. When people make snap judgements based on his clothes, they don’t have time to form opinions on his background. If you ask me, it doesn’t work as well as he likes to think it does.

He has a good heart. People have always responded to that above all else. Makes you think he’s trustworthy.

[ _the rumble in his chest could’ve been emotion, or it could’ve been the beginning of the latest hacking fit. It goes on and on until he fights to breathe between coughs._ ]

Fuck.

[ _click_ ]

**Fuck.**

Why am I doing this? O’Deorain can’t say how much I’ll forget, what I’ll lose once the transition reaches my brain. Could be nothing, could be everything, or any shade in between. I’ll still be here but I won’t  _ be here _ [the sound of tapping, muted, like it was on a soft surface]. Which, really, fuck this entire situation. Made her promise me to direct me as necessary if it came down to it. She knows who deserves my skillset on their tails as well as I do. Better, maybe, the woman’s pattern-deduction is a thing to behold.

But McCree, you don’t forget a man like him. And whoever you are, you’ll want him.

You can’t have him. I couldn’t, so you sure as hell can’t.

[ _click_ ]

[ _silence_ ]

[ _then, just before Jesse moves to turn it off, so low he almost misses it_ ]

Fuck, I’m gonna miss him.

[C **lick.** ]

* * *

Jesse stares into nothing. He reaches for the bottle of tequila with a heavy hand, uncorking it, then offering it to Sombra, who takes a healthy swig. He watches her with vague appreciation, accepting the bottle for his own swig, barely noting the  purple lipstick she left on the rim.

“So. Where’d you find it?”

“He has a digital clone in his office. Not connected to anything else. It was under his debriefing files.” 

“Hmm.” Jesse takes another swig. “He knows you have it?”

“No.”

“Yeah he does.” Jesse says, dismissively. “So, when you got it, how long’d you have it before you found me?”

“Is this important?”

“No. You should probably get back before they miss you.” She reaches for the audio-player. “No. Leave it. I have some homework to do.”

She looks at him for a long time, like she’s trying to break him down. Then she shrugs. “I’m only trying to help,  _ vaquero _ . This? This one is on the house. Next time you have to pay.”

“Yeah, yeah. You have my sincerest thanks.” Sarcasm and hurt didn’t mix well, less so with the taste of tequila on his tongue, and she makes a face, so he sighs. “Take care of’im for me for a bit longer.”

“Alright, Joel, but just for you.”

“Don’t call me that.” But it’s half-hearted now, the alcohol fuzzing his senses over. He hears the sound of her translocating, leaving him alone with the audiofile. He picks it up again, ejecting the chip, and turns it over in his hands, lost in thought.

“Fuck.”

Looks like he had a long couple weeks ahead of him.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm going to stay in Overwatch for awhile, I definitely have more story to explore. Anyway, there will be a second chapter for this story, it's in the works and all I can say is it's the narrative equivalent of the table flip emoji.
> 
> Here's the link to the essay that inspired this (cancer warning):  
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/style/modern-love-you-may-want-to-marry-my-husband.html


End file.
